The Semitic Languages (Routledge Language Family Descriptions)

The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 370 million people across much of the Middle East, where they probably originated, and North and East Africa. They constitute the northeastern subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic languages, and the only branch of this group spoken in Asia.
The most widely spoken Semitic language today is Arabic (206 million speakers), followed by Amharic (27 million speakers), Hebrew (7.5 million speakers), and Tigrinya (6.75 million speakers). Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BC. The term "Semitic" for these languages, after Shem son of Noah, is etymologically a misnomer in some ways, but is nonetheless standard.


This is the first general survey of the Semitic languages, including the Arab and Aramaic dialects and various languages of Ethiopia.